On Monday, the keynote speaker at the engineering education conference I’m attending was discussing a project of the National Academy of Engineering, called Grand Challenges for Engineering. A team of high profile and visionary thinkers was assembled to think about the things that the world most needs as we look forward, and what we engineers could focus our time and talent on to make a positive difference.
They came up with 14 challenges, which are presented in the below video from the website. Part of what I liked about Charles Vest’s talk was that he grouped these challenges into four categories, one of which was to “expand and enhance human capability and joy.”
Statements like this are really heartening, as they help me to make a more explicit connection between my vocation as a Roman Catholic woman religious and my current ministry of engineering education. What brings peace and joy is certainly a part of my everyday discernment about where God is calling me to invest my talents and energies.
We could all use a little more joy, and why not expect engineers to consider this as a worthwhile thing to bring about?
